El Salvador - History

Photo by: Ignatius Wooster

About 3000
BC
, nomadic Nahuatl Amerindians, originally from present-day Mexico,
migrated to Central America. The Pipil Amerindians were living in the
region now known as El Salvador at the time of the Spanish conquest.
They were an agricultural people, with a civilization similar to that of
the Aztecs, except that the Pipil had abolished human sacrifice. In
addition to the Pipil, two smaller groups, the Pocomans and the Lenca,
lived in the area.

In 1524, Pedro de Alvarado, a Spanish conquistador sent by Hernán
Cortés from Mexico, invaded El Salvador. After being forced to
retreat by Amerindian resistance, he returned in 1525, defeated the
Pipil and founded Sonsonate and San Salvador. During Spanish colonial
period, San Salvador was one of six administrative regions under the
captaincy-general of Guatemala. Spanish settlement consisted of a few
cattle ranchers and some farmers.

The first call for independence from Spain, still commemorated as a
national holiday, was made on 5 November 1811 by Father José
Matías Delgado from the church of La Merced in San Salvador.
However, independence did not come until 15 September 1821, when
Guatemala led a movement for the independence of all of Central America.
In 1822 the Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide annexed all of
Central America, but a year later he was deposed. El Salvador joined the
United Provinces of Central America, which dissolved in 1838–39.

The republic was formally proclaimed on 25 January 1859. Turbulence,
political instability, and frequent presidential changes characterized
Salvadoran history during the second half of the 19th century. This
period also saw the growth of coffee as El Salvador's leading
product. The Salvadoran elite, known as the "14 families"
or simply "the 14," created large coffee plantations,
often on the land of displaced Indians. There followed a period of
relative stability during 1900–30, but the seizure of power in
1931 by Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martínez brought a
period of constant military rule for almost 50 years. Hernández
ruled for 13 years. Known for his mysticism, he also presided over the
brutal suppression of a peasant uprising in 1932, with about 30,000
people killed. Few of the governments after Hernández even tried
to reduce the gap between the landowners and the landless classes, and
those who did were doomed to failure.

Landless Salvadorans found land available in neighboring Honduras.
During the 1960s the influx of Salvadorans increased, provoking
countermeasures from the Honduran government. Tensions rose between the
two nations, and on 14 July 1969, they went to war for four days. The
immediate occasion of the conflict was the Central American soccer
championship (which El Salvador won over Honduras on a disputed
referee's call), leading US journalists to dub it the
"Soccer War." A total of 3,000–4,000 people on both
sides were killed. After an OAS-sponsored cease-fire, the two sides
worked out a peace settlement, which was signed on 30 October 1980. A
leftover border dispute was settled by the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) in 1992.

In 1972, the military candidate for president was opposed by José
Napoleón Duarte of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Duarte
was denied election by fraud and sent into exile. Pressure for reform
now came from the armed resistance from several leftist factions. The
right unleashed "death squads" whose function was to
intimidate and eliminate any who attempted to introduce change to the
country.

By the late 1970s, the situation had become a civil war. The guerrillas
had consolidated under the Farabundo Martí National Liberation
Front (FMLN), and right-wing violence escalated. The military had not
distinguished itself in its response to the violence, having engaged in
widespread repression against suspected rebels. In 1979, a coup brought
to power a set of reformist officers, who found common cause with such
civilian leaders as Duarte. The junta liberalized the political system,
setting legislative elections for 1982. The junta nationalized banks and
the coffee export trade, while launching an ambitious and controversial
land-reform program. Attacked by both left and right, the junta was
unable either to suppress left-wing guerrillas or to control its own
security forces, which began their own vigilante campaigns even as the
angry landowners hired "death squads" to suppress
opposition among peasants, students, clergy, and other groups.

In December 1980, José Napoleón Duarte of the Christian
Democratic Party was installed by the junta as president—El
Salvador's first civilian head of state since 1931—and a
state of siege was proclaimed. Human rights groups could scarcely keep
up with the number of violations occurring. In 1980, Archbishop Romero
was assassinated while celebrating mass. In January 1981, the guerrillas
launched their unsuccessful "final offensive," and
throughout the rest of the year the bloodshed continued unabated. It is
estimated that at least 62,000 people died between October 1979 and
April 1987, most of whom were civilian noncombatants murdered by death
squads and government security forces.

The junta headed by Duarte oversaw the drafting of a new constitution,
adopted on 20 December 1983 by a constituent assembly that had been
elected in March 1982. An interim president, Álvaro Alfredo
Magaña, served through the March 1984 presidential election. In
1984, Duarte defeated Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta of the National
Republican Alliance in a runoff election in May. Duarte thus became the
first constitutionally elected president in over 50 years.

Duarte's regime was a difficult balancing act between right and
left, in the midst of attempts to bring about reform. The Christian
Democrats won a majority in the National Assembly in the March 1985
legislative elections, but Duarte's overriding problem was the
ongoing civil war. Eventually, economic dislocation brought on by
Duarte's austerity measures and charges of corruption led to the
election in 1989 of ARENA's (National Republican Alliance)
Alfredo Félix Christiani Burkard. As Christiani came to office,
many feared the worst, for ARENA had been tied to former candidate
D'Aubuisson, an extreme anticommunist who had frequently been
accused of plotting against the government and supporting the death
squads.

Christiani allayed these fears, and then some others. He called for
direct dialogue between the government and the guerrillas. Although the
process was rocky, and punctuated by military escalations, on 31
December 1991 the government and the FMLN signed an agreement, the
Chapultepec Accord, which supplied the long hoped-for political solution
to the civil war. A ceasefire took effect 1 February 1992, and held
until 15 December 1992, when the FMLN officially laid down its arms.

New elections were held in 1994, and voters returned ARENA to power,
with Armando Calderón Sol winning the presidential runoff
election. Calderón embarked on an ambitious economic
liberalization plan, cutting tariffs, privatizing banks and pensions,
and attracting foreign investment. However, in spite of healthy economic
growth of 4–5% a year, underemployment and low wages continued
for much of the nation's workforce, accompanied by an upswing in
violent crime. In the countryside, marauding bands robbed agricultural
workers, while urban dwellers fell prey to organized gang activity,
imported by Salvadorans returning to the country from the United States
in the early 1990s. In spite of a 1996 12-point government plan that
included investment in infrastructure and social services, the
electorate voiced its discontent with the ruling ARENA party in the
March 1997 parliamentary and local elections by giving the leftist FMLN
its first significant legislative boost since the 1992 peace accords and
effectively legitimizing the former guerillas as a major political
force. FMLN representation in the 84-member legislature increased from
14 to 27 seats, while ARENA's share fell from 42 to 28 seats. In
addition, FMNL candidates made significant gains in local elections
throughout the country. The accord calls for reforms throughout the
military, including the purge of officers linked to human rights abuses,
and a reduction by 50% of the force. While the former has been a slow
process, the latter goal was achieved ahead of schedule. In addition,
paramilitary groups were to be banned, and land reforms were to be
initiated.

Presidential elections were last held on 7 March 1999. The ruling ARENA
party retained control of the presidency. ARENA's Francisco
Flores won with 51.4% of the vote. In the March 2000 parliamentary
election, ARENA only obtained 36% in the Assembly, securing 29 out of 84
seats in the legislative body. The strong showing by the FMLN made them
the largest party in the Assembly, with 31 seats. In the most recent
parliamentary elections, held in March 2003, the FMLN consolidated its
position, but did not win ground as it got 31 seats in the Assembly.
ARENA fell to 27 seats. The parliamentary elections were widely seen as
a prelude to the March 2004 presidential election. The 2% margin of
victory enjoyed by FMLN will make that election a highly contested
affair, but the former leftist guerilla movement turned political party
could very well win the presidency for the first time in that
country's history.